Just wanted to share that some twitter accounts have “live tweeted” the attack on Pearl Harbor that took place 75 years ago today.
The @USSArizona one is particularly haunting as it details the attack as it’s occurring.
Please, Jesus, let this thread not have any cross-posting with the “Donald Trump says…” thread. Please.
I guess this will the last “big” anniversary that people care about. What’s struck me is that despite there being a lot of coverage about the “big 100” anniversary of WW1 - including big games being made about it - it doesn’t ‘feel’ to me like WW1 is really that important culturally anymore. The history nerds are making lots of content, but i’m not sure the broader public is showing up for it.
American involvement in the First World War was extremely limited compared to our involvement in the Second World War. Plus, our national dialogue doesn’t like dealing with the fact that “American Exceptionalism” came about because of Europe’s decision to embrace mutually assured destruction from 1914-18, and not because of the innate and eternal greatness of America’s national character.
Obviously, having surviving veterans is a big boost to the collective memory, but I can assure you that there’s significantly more interest and coverage of World War One’s centenary in Europe than in America.
There is also the fact that, from a geopolitics perspective, WWI was the destruction of the old world order, and WWII is where a new one was born. It was the aftermath of that world that shaped the identities and alliances of nations until this day.
Though WWI does not get nearly enough understanding from a perspective towards middle east policy. There is a strong through line from the Treaty of Versailles and the conflicts and troubles of the middle east today.
Culturally this stuff just doesn’t resonate anymore though. I was (and still an) pretty shocked about how low key the 150 Civil War has been. Somehow the war has both become more politized than it used to be - the South are back to being damn dirty apes - along with another round of de-Confederate-ization recently in the wake of the Charleston Church shooting (and also due to massive demographic changes in the Sunbelt putting paid to old southern identities in many cases) and basically no one wants to talk about it.
But when I was growing up there were all sorts of war movies that kept the younger generations interested in the old conflicts, and I think that’s why we all ended up interested in Midway and the Battle of Britain and thus WW2 flight sims, or all the WW2 land war movies, and so are interested in strategic WW2 games. For the new kids today these things just don’t exist in near the level as they did, and they absolutely demonized war and certainly aren’t interested in “war equipment” like the tanks, ships and planes like we were.
I agree with your larger point, but quibble with the details. Namely: it was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and not the Versailles Treaty, that fundamentally and irreversibly changed the Middle East.
Sykes-Picot and the various League of Nation mandates and European spheres of influences were all attempts to “put the toothpaste back in the tube”, so to speak, by creating complex multi-ethnic states that an imperial government could more easily manage. The European contributions may not have been enlightened or effective, but they’re small potatoes compared to the central fact of Ottoman collapse.
Yes, I understand that, but the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is directly and inextricably linked to the end of WWI. The victors carved out colonial spheres of their own that ignored or intentionally subverted the natural successor states that existed. British and French colonialism in handling the collapse of the Ottomans echoes large today.
But it is simpler to say that the end of the war led to these things, as the end of the war also lay the seeds for Japanese resentment that led to them attacking the Allied powers in WWII.
But anyone who understands the complexities and intricacies of those things wouldn’t need reminding of them. The general public, if you were to ask them about the Treaty of Versailles, would probably give you a blank stare. It is simply a convenient shorthand for signifying the end of the war, and all the various and multitudinous treaties, agreements, reparations, and rearranging of territory that occurred.
One thing I wonder, in regards to WWI vs WWII recognition, is what the perspective of the Australians is. Perhaps @Tim_N or @sharaleo can answer, but as I understand it WWI, and specifically the Battle of Gallipoli, was pretty foundational to the formation of your national identity. Is that still true today? Do people have a much larger remembrance of WWI than seems to be the case for America?
All reasonable points, and I should have been more sympathetic to your totally normal use of “Versailles” as a shorthand for “the war’s conclusion.” But I’m still gonna quibble:
[quote=“CraigM, post:8, topic:127422”]The victors carved out colonial spheres of their own that ignored or intentionally subverted the natural successor states that existed.
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There weren’t any “natural successor states” to the Ottoman Empire. The Empire was racially diverse; any attempt to mimic European-style ethnic nationalism was going to involve significant displacement and genocide.
The Europeans were crappy and imperialistic in their treatment of the Middle East, and certainly gerrymandered border lines to their own benefit. But “ethnic nationalism” applied to the Middle East is a recipe for genocide, and this was common knowledge at the time, as the Armenian Genocide hard gotten a lot of coverage in Entente nations.
The great genocides of the 20th Century (Armenian, Holocaust, Partition of India) were all the results of efforts to create “natural” mono-ethnic states. It turns out that such states aren’t “natural” and require a great deal of murdering to create! Mono-ethnic states only seemed “natural” because that’s how things were done in Europe for a century or so, up until nationalism caused two horrendously destructive wars.
I’d say for sure.
We have a national public holiday celebrating the ANZACs on 25th April and also recognise Remembrance day with one minute silence on November 11.
https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac-tradition/
https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/remembrance/
Though these days, both events serve to recognise all those that have served for Australia, before or since.
Just in 2016, over 1000 Aussies traveled to Gallopili to attend the Dawn Service and in Perth alone, 30,000 people attended the same at the King’s Park War Memorial:
There has been a strong and I think growing trend in Australia over the last decade or so recognise and remember our troops and their service for their part in defining Australia both at home and on the world stage.
Standing in a crowd of ~30,000 and recognising a minute of complete and utter silence is an incredibly surreal experience.
To offer a slightly different perspective to @sharaleo, this is my interpretation of popular culture here in Australia in regards to WW1/WW2.
Gallipoli, more than any other particular battle, is mentioned on Rememberance day and ANZAC day as forming the Australian military mythology of ‘mateship’ and the ANZAC spirit. Nevertheless, the context of the battle and the overall history of WW1 are in my view very rarely discussed. WW2 receives a great deal more attention, specifically the role of the Australian soldiers fighting the Germans in North Africa (e.g. the rats of tobruk), and even more importantly defending south east asia and the mainland against the Japanese. To be honest I would suspect a sizable minority of Australians would guess that the battle of Gallipoli happened during WW2.
Personally, I have a grandfather who flew Spitfires over Britain and France, and another grandfather who was one of the rats in Tobruk. Both are long dead due to, surprise surprise, lung cancer from cigarettes. I think about these two more than anything else on days of remembrance (although I do believe every conscript/volunteer in these wars deserve thought also).
I heard that Prime Minister Abe is planning to visit Pearl Harbor at the end of this December and meet with President Obama. Obama just this year visited Hiroshima. It will be nice to see this kind of reconciliation between the countries. (They get along great of course, but sometimes it seems like they’re just pretending those years never happened.)
True enough. But it’s hard to argue that what the Europeans ended up doing in the Middle East was any better than the alternatives, and in the long run, letting things go their own way might have actually been better than the manipulation by the imperial powers. But we’ll never know.
When my Grandfather passed away and the family made the arrangements to have a military presence at the funeral they brought us copies of items from his military record. It was from that info that we learned that he had been stationed at Pearl Harbor with the Army on the day of the attack. He never talked about his time during WWII and even his own kids had no idea that he had been there on that day.
Several years after the war he served with the Army in Japan and wound up moving his family over for the time he was stationed there. My Mom always said he developed a great love for the people of Japan. He always had a few pieces of Japanese art hanging in his house. I always thought it was an odd contrast to the rest of his home decorations but as a kid I just never thought to even ask about it.
My country was occupied by the Japanese during the war. But to a kid growing up thirty years after the war, the love and respect afforded those members of the British Commonwealth and Australian armies who fought and died defending Malaysia and Singapore was still evident. There’s a military cemetery a few miles up the coast from my home town of Batu Pahat where I remember the well kept tombstones bearing the foreign names of English, Indian, Punjab, Gurkha and Digger soldiers. It’s funny, even almost 35 years later I still have very vivid memories of visiting that place.
My maternal grandfather never spoke of his time in WWII unless he had a few too many beverages. Then, the only thing he said was that he regretted that as a poor kid who had never left his state, let alone been overseas, he couldn’t tell the difference between the Japanese and any native populations, so they just killed everybody. As I later went through the few things he kept, I found out he was an Army landing craft pilot who fought in New Guinea (hi Australians!) and worked his way through New Britain, into the Philippines, and was preparing for the invasion of the Home Islands when the bombs dropped.
He never bought a Japanese product, but couldn’t bring himself to hate them.
I am on the board of directors of Pacific Historical Parks, which is the official fundraising organization for the Arizona Memorial, as well as three other WWII sites in the Pacific. The organization spent much of the past year working on the 75th anniversary activities. Much of the effort was directed at getting the WWII vets and especially their families to Pearl Harbor. I spent most of the last week attending the bigger of the 40 odds that went on in Hawaii.
There is no doubt that WWII captures the imagination of the public more than other wars, but I think a huge difference is the presence of veterans. Nothing gets more media attention than the old vets reuniting with their comrades and sharing their stories.
I didn’t get a chance to meet Ray but I did see him at a couple of events and when he rang the freedom bell. The MC for the big 1200 person gala said. “sorry Admirals who gave all those rousing speeches but this is the front page of the newspaper” and sure enough it was.
I think WWII will remain a popular topic for gamers for a generation or more , young boys are still sucked in by Call of Duty and such. However, at the end of the next 4 year as we go through the 75th anniversaries I think it will start to fade into obscurity but for the broader public. (Last year I attended the 70th anniversary of the battle for Iwo Jima which got moderate coverage.)
I think the passing of the vets is going have a big impact. It is something that terrifies me, and to a lesser extent the National Park Service and my organization. Attendance at Gettysburg has plummetted despite it being within a days drive of 1/2 the country to the point where it is well below the 1.6-1.8 million we get Pearl Harbor/Arizona Memorial. The 150th anniversary was almost completely ignored.
I spent a lot of time of the last year and the organization a lot of money in developing several VR Google Cardboard compatible applications as a way of possibly engaging young people.
To see it search for “Pearl Harbor VR” in the Google or Apple app stores. it is still beta and we are struggling with marketing. So if anybody has feedback, I’d appreciate a message. All the profits go to the Memorial.
We have an even more ambitious goal to make the almost 1,000 oral and video interviews with survivors, tens of thousands of picture, personal files, over a terrabyte of data in all with the general public, but it is a daunting and expensive task for organizations which have almost no technology background.
I would have gone myself, were it not for a newborn at the time.
But your point is taken.
Man I wish I had a setup for VR, because that kind of things sounds cool.
I went to Gallipoli about 8 years ago. Despite the British losing roughly ten times the number of soldiers, Aussies and Kiwi visitors outnumber Brits at least two to one. IIRC there was one other American, beside my girlfriend and I on the tour.
I’ve also been to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, which I found to be one of the finest of its kind, just behind the Imperial War Museum in London. I think Aussie are very patriotic people right up there with Americans, and Gallipoli being really the birth of the country it has a special significance, closer in spirit to the Declaration of Independence.
My girlfriend couldn’t of cared less (despite being a Mel Gibson fan (pre-crazy days)) but fortunately we had done our homework and found a truly exceptional guide. Only because of him did she find the tour really cool. I am sure should would have found the War Memorial dull.
Which brings me to my point. Only us history nerds are interested in things like weapons, and strategies, and tactics. The general public only is willing to listen to history if it is told via stories. That really is the lesson of Ken Burns, and Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks and the survivors, it is all about the stories.